Glassware is easy to overlook until you’re short of it on a Friday night. Choosing well comes down to four things: your drinks list, the material, your dishwasher and how much spare stock you keep.
Start with your drinks list
List every drink you serve and group them by glass. Most venues need fewer shapes than they think. A good all-purpose wine glass, a tumbler, a highball and one stemmed cocktail glass will cover most menus.
Choose the right material
Tempered soda-lime glass is the workhorse: affordable and resistant to chips. Lead-free crystal is thinner and clearer, and suits fine-dining wine service, but costs more to replace. Many venues use crystal for wine and tempered glass for everything else.
Fewer shapes means less storage, simpler training and faster reordering.
Check it fits your dishwasher
Measure your racks before you order. Tall stems that don’t fit standard racks get washed by hand, which slows service and raises breakage. Ask your supplier for rack-compatible ranges.
Plan for breakage
Keep a reserve of each shape, and choose ranges your supplier stocks year-round so you can top up without changing designs. Discontinued lines leave you with mismatched tables.
- ◆Map every drink to a glass shape
- ◆Tempered glass for volume, crystal for wine service
- ◆Confirm rack compatibility
- ◆Hold reserve stock of each shape
- ◆Choose continuously stocked ranges
Our equipment team can review your drinks list and suggest a range. Send it over with your covers and we’ll put together a quote.